Are you healthy? I quit smoking four months ago. I like fruits and vegetables so I eat them. I'm on the go all the time so by default I tend to do a lot of walking. And I was in a curling league this winter. Am I healthy? I honestly have no idea.
When it comes to the topic of health, this past year has been eventful to say the least. There have been some health scares with people who are very close to me. I lost an aunt to cancer a year ago, and my mother recently lost a cousin her age as well. It has me thinking a lot about what it means to be healthy and what we can do about it.
What can we do about it? If we take our advice from any magazine, from tv experts, or from the late-night supplement commercials, we will spend thousands of dollars and hours dedicated to consuming oils and supplements, repeating lunges and palates moves, and wearing yoga pants and magnetic bracelets. Will any of that make us healthy? Must we contribute an hour to meditation, ten minutes to stretching, half an hour to walking, forty-five minutes to bird watching, and seventy-five dollars to organic kelp smoothies each day? Should maintaining our bodies and our minds really be this complicated?
I had the idea to do a blog series where I research all the advice given by the likes of Dr. Oz or any Oprah-endorsed personality, all the health magazines, all the supplements, a general practitioner, a naturopath, the old wives-tales, and any other bit of health advice roaming around the airwaves to date and do them all. I think it could be an interesting experiment on the chaos of our quality of life. Someone really should do that blog—but that person is not me. Honestly, I don't have the time or the money, or probably the patience. And I have a sneaking suspicion doing it all will kill a person.
So while I was thinking about this conundrum I asked myself as I often do—what would my grandma do?
My grandma (we called her babcia) lived to be 92. In August, my husband and I are going to Winnipeg to celebrate his grandma's (he calls her baba) 90th birthday. Many of my babcia's siblings are still alive and well, with their wits and their legs still kicking, approaching or past 90.
Do you honestly think you will live to that age? Honestly, now. To hear the media bark, we are all doomed to die of diabetes before long if we don't live on a steady diet of goji berries, flaxseed oil, avocados, and aqua-robics, and we must start right now! Yet, I know my babcia never once in her life ate a goji berry. So what's the deal?
I don't have the book with me right now, so I'm not about to cite anything, but I'm sure it was in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma that I read the best piece of food-related advice I have ever seen. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said if your grandma doesn't recognize it as food, it's not food. Ok, I'm not suggesting that a goji berry isn't food. I'm sure it's very good for you. But so is a raspberry, and those grow in my back yard.
So here's what I have figured out. My babcia was healthy, and I am not. She was healthy into her nineties because she walked to the grocery store and pushed her groceries back in a little cart. She mowed her lawn. She gardened, she made bread, she kept a clean house, she cooked her own meals, she pickled, she canned, she sewed, she went outside. When she wanted popcorn she popped it in an air popper, not the microwave. My babcia was afraid of the microwave.
I can hear you all rolling your eyes and mumbling about responsibilities and a different world, and who has the time, and we have to work, and I shouldn't have to can, and the grocery store is on the other side of town. My babcia was also hooked on her “stories” (All my Children, mostly) and she loved a good nap. She relaxed, and she also worked into her seventies. Suck it up, spoon-fed youngsters! Make time.
What else you got? You don't have a backyard? Can't grow raspberries? Go buy them! Farmer's market too expensive? Opt for good quality fruit over Starbucks. Can't get to the farmer's market on Saturday? Go to the grocery store on a Tuesday. Grocery store too far away? If it is less than ten blocks then put on your walking shoes and buy a little trolly. I used to use a big suitcase. Ok, fine, I'll meet you in the middle. Walk to the grocery store, bus back with the groceries.
Here's a challenge: commit to cooking dinner 5 days a week WITHOUT using the microwave. Vacuum three times a week—it only takes 10 minutes. Dance, play with some kids, learn to pickle beans, shovel the sidewalk, take up crocheting, whittling, soap making. Do something old fashioned, and put some elbow grease into it. Then, when you're all done, munch on some veggies and dip.
I hope you're thinking now that none of this sounds new. You've heard it all before. Well, that's the point. Somewhere along the line we forgot that we instinctually know how to care for our bodies and our minds. These are not new designs that we need to fiddle with. We are not iBody 2.0. We are the same machine as our grandparents. The difference is, our grandparents just got on with this living stuff, while we keep trying to refer to manuals and upgrades. So that's my new/old philosophy for health. Be active, eat food, and put some effort into it.
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